Dedicated to inspiring designers, inventors & the creative spirit in all of us.

A friend of mine shared this story with me, and I couldn’t resist posting it. As it turns out, everything around us does not need to be so complicated in design.

A designer from Oxford designed a pair of glasses that conceals two pockets that are filled with water to create a lens. As the injected water builds pressure in the pouch that is the lens, vision is optimized one drop at a time. Once vision is ideal, the lens is closed and the syringe goes into the other side of the frame to customize the view for the other eye.

Third World countries are benefiting from this low-cost design that is making perfect vision a right, not a luxury. Good design should change lives, and I believe this design does that.

ID sketcher Spencer Nugent explains in this article, “the essence of why we sketch ideas as designers is seeded in effectively communicating ideas to our clients. Sketching is our language of communication.”

This is something I believe to be true. Take a minute to view this article, plump with great sketches and renderings, to better understand the levels of sketching. Better yet, look forward to a special video blog interview with Spencer in the near future!

In a time long, long ago, I had to make mix tapes. I would spend hours mixing albums and shuffling songs from all of my CD’s, then buy a pack of cassettes to begin recording. Once complete, I would cut up stickers and personalize my cassette so it could go everywhere I went; my car, my Walkman, my boom box. But times have changed. Now everything is digital, play lists take minutes to create and people aren’t caught dead with a cassette player in their hand. Until now.

This player lets you fast-forward or rewind a song manually by rotating the spools with your finger, then play by sliding the play button. Outta battery juice? Just rotate the spools; rotating the second hole of the tape charges it with kinetic energy. An LED indicates the power status showing green for fully charged, amber for half-charged and red for nearly dead. Available in 45/60/90 minute varieties, this device also hides a USB plug.

It’s actually an overall cool design. Now I’m just waiting for some Etsy seller to make a cool carrying case, maybe a little cassette case for storing all of your play lists in a library.

Ok, here is the ultimate wake-up call. This alarm sonically detonates at your hour of choosing and can only be turned off by ‘cutting’ one of the wires. Choose poorly, and you have to hear the echoes of this time bomb as it rattles your bedroom; choose wisely and you can roll over and get a few more winks before you begin your day. This is interactive design at its best. There are few products that truly engage consumers in using them and this is one of those products. If made a little more realistic, or a little more cartoony, this could not be pulled off.

Good idea or bad idea? I am going with bad idea, however, it is certainly a well-designed bear suit . The idea of enticing a black bear with the opportunity to play, or worse, mate, by crawling into this bear-themed sleeping bag is just wrong. However, to have this realistic bear suit available for the annual Halloween party makes this a great design.